I currently have a Synology 220+ and a couple of VPS’s, and I’m looking to consolidate, while getting out of Synology’s walled garden. I’ve already got a couple of 3.5’s in the Synology, and 4 2.5’s lying around and I’m planning on running a number of docker containers and a couple of vms.
That said, I’ve never built anything before, and basically just went to PCPartPicker, started with the case, and checked 5-stars on each component and went from there. So… how absurd is my build?
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor | $135.00 @ Amazon |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB Liquid CPU Cooler | $90.71 @ Amazon |
| Motherboard | MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard | $165.99 @ B&H |
| Memory | TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory | $26.99 @ Amazon |
| Storage | Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive | Purchased For $179.00 |
| Storage | Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive | Purchased For $179.00 |
| Storage | Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive | $159.99 @ Adorama |
| Case | Fractal Design Meshify 2 ATX Mid Tower Case | $173.89 @ Newegg |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM650 (2023) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | $89.99 @ Corsair |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total | $1200.56 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-05-23 19:32 EDT-0400 |
Someone else mentioned the cooler too, so that’s out for sure. To be honest, I never really thought about graphics in the traditional sense, but I do need something for at least Jellyfin transcoding. And maybe a small llm. Would it be better to get a dedicated GPU or CPU with integrated?
The gold standard for transcoding these days is a newer gen Intel CPU with integrated graphics.
The integrated GPU on those intel chips can do Intel QuickSync / QSV which will handle a dozen streams at once without breaking a sweat.
Dedicated GPUs are obviously going to be more powerful. I’ve never run ai before so maybe someone else can weigh in on the requirements for it, but I can say for sure that an igpu is good enough for jellyfin transcoding. It also depends on your budget, do you want to spend the extra money just for a dedicated GPU?
If you go igpu route I think that Intel is recommended over AMD, but you should probably do extra research on that before buying
My amd igpu works just fine for jellyfin. LLMs are a little slow, but that’s to be expected.
Yeah, I’m not sure if I really want to deal with an llm. It would mostly be for home assistant, so nothing too crazy.
I have a very similar NAS I built. The Home Assistant usage doesn’t really even move the needle. I’m running around 50 docker containers and chilling at about 10% cpu.
The LLM for home assistant, or just HA in general doesn’t move the needle? My HA is also pretty low key, but I was considering the idea of running my own small llm to use with HA to get off of OpenAI. My current AI usage is very small, so I wouldn’t need too much on the GPU side I’d imagine, but I don’t know what’s sufficient.
Just home assistant doesn’t move the needle. The llms hit the igpu hard and my cpu usage spikes to 70-80% when one is thinking.
But my llms i’m running are ollama and invokeai each with several different models just for fun.